For those who may not remember their Bible history: Saul of Tarsus was a Pharisee who actively persecuted (unto death) Christians (followers of "The Way;" those who claimed Jesus was the Messiah); until one day on the road to Damascus he saw a bright light that rendered him temporarily blind and heard the voice of Jesus saying to him, "Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?" After this experienced, he was baptized into "The Way" and actively preached the gospel of Jesus, arguably becoming the most effective apostle of what is considered "Christianity" and author of much of the New Testament of the Bible.
I don't know that I actively persecuted red dots or dot shooter, but I certainly had reached my own strong conclusions about shooting irons and having tried both an ACRO and an RMR declared them to be "not worth the squeeze."
At this point I could pontificate on my own reasons for making these judgements. I think some of it was comfort nostalgia. I have a lot of rounds on irons and felt my performance with irons was right there with dots. Price of a whole-house change to dots was daunting. I had re-arranged some priorities in my own life, was shooting less, and was pursuing (or not) shooting with a different level of intensity. I felt that I was able to make my "average joe" performance requirements for defensive use of a handgun with lower cost and complexity with irons and took that path.
I don't know that the above supposition is "wrong" per se. I can still execute a pretty decent level of performance with a pistol using iron sights. However, at this point I am convinced that the Red Dot brings a level of performance advantage that at this point is un-deniable; to the point that now all my pistols wear them.
So why the change? What do I gain with the dot? What did I miss when shooting irons?
1. Precision at distance - this is probably the biggest one. I was already running the thinnest readily-available Tritium front sight you can get (.125). That covers a MASSIVE amount of stuff at 25yds and beyond. Does that matter for most practical applications of a pistol? Depends on what you consider practical application of a pistol, but more is better, right?
2. Speed, both close up and at distance. Now this is where stuff gets tricky. The distance part is probably obvious because we can see more/better reference of our target at distance with a dot in a window than with iron sights, but what about close speed? That's where most dot users (especially newer ones) claim to suffer. I would submit at this point it's because you're doing it wrong and when you do it right you'll be faster with a dot than with irons; even up close. One of the primary advantages of a dot is that it allows you to shoot with a target focus. From a defensive perspective, we call that a "threat focus" and that helps us see things like identifying gun vs cell phone, gun being dropped, target moving, etc. Also, if you're shooting with a target focus, you can focus much more of your visual attention on the target and your relation to it if you're moving, it's moving, it's doing other stuff, etc; instead of going: target -> "sights" -> front sight, and/or some additional variations of plane focusing while also trying to beat the clock (the timer or the threat shooting/stabbing/whatever you) and ensuring the shot goes where it needs to go.
Now that we've discussed the software a bit, let's talk hardware. There's a lot of talk about fragility of the dot, the mounting, battery, etc, and what's not said, but sort of assumed is that this is in juxtaposition to iron sights, which are eternal, never-failing. That is not the case. Are there dots that fail? Yes. Are there dot mounts that fail? Yes. Are there dots with bad battery life? Yes. Can you get a dot with a pretty solid chance of it working really well, not coming loose, and having a battery life of a year or more? YEP! Are there irons that fail? Yes. I saw the front sight off a Wilson 1911 fail the shooter mid-Bill Drill this weekend. My Ameriglo backup sights failed this weekend as well. It took about 700 rounds into the class about half way through day 2. I drew the pistol to check ready before an exercise and noticed my dot and irons were WAY off. A second look confirmed that the rear had drifted to the edge of the dovetail on its own.
So, can dots fail? Yes. Can irons fail? Yes. Can pistols fail? Yes. Can anything fail? Yes. Can you take steps to mitigate these failures? Yes. Are the advantages of a dot compared to irons worth finding the right combination of hardware and practices to mitigate failure? Yes, I believe so.
So, nothing super novel here. A lot of you and others not reading this have already found what I have and are "dot converts." For me, it took two false starts and some personal honesty, but I'm here now. For me, an added bonus is the experience of shooting a Gabe class with a dot and earning a Light Pin to back it up. All the draws at speed. All the multiple target engagements. All the shooting on the move. All the checking for parallax based on improper sight picture (btw, with the RMR there's virtually none out to 15yds).
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Originally Posted by ASH556
